Awards for the Faculty of Business and Law's Class of 2018

Outstanding students collected some well-deserved awards as the Faculty of Business and Law recognised the highest achievers in its Class of 2018.

The students were nominated by lecturers for top grades for assignments or on modules, excelling on internships or going the extra mile during their studies at Leicester De Montfort Law School or the Leicester Castle Business School.



Dr Alwyn Jones, Beverley Vickerstaff, Parmjit Kaur and Professor Alasdair Blair were on hand to oversee the awards at four ceremonies. You can see a gallery of all our winners on Facebook.

Prof Blair said: “Graduations are a time of celebration here at the university and for our graduates, their friends and family. We are delighted to have this opportunity to personally present awards to those students who have excelled, and to wish them all the very best for their future.”



Many of the prizewinners have secured jobs on graduate training schemes including Katie Shaw, who has secured a trainee solicitor role with Gateley Plc, which is paying for her to complete her Legal Practice Certificate in Birmingham.

Katie, from Ashby, said: “It’s a cliché but I have wanted to be a solicitor since I was young and I would watch all the legal dramas, and I have loved my time at DMU.
“I have been so lucky to get a job with Gateleys already, it has been a fairytale to be honest.”



Zain Rashid (pictured above) won two awards and was described as “an asset to seminars” and an exceptional student. Zain, from Humberstone, Leicester, said: “It has been amazing. The best bit has been doing medical law in my final year. It gave me a completely different view on the law and the issues.”

Zain is now training to be a teacher and begins his PGCE studies in September. “The law school has been challenging but in a good way.”    

Matthew McConnochie, who won best Marketing Management student, joined DMU as a mature student. He’d given up his marketing role and his first son, Archer, was just two weeks old when he embarked on his studies. Now both his sons, Archer and Elwin, were at the ceremony to see him graduate and collect awards.

“I pretty much uprooted our lives to come and study at DMU,” he said. “I was working in marketing but wanted to learn more about the theory and get the qualifications. My family have supported me all the way and it has worked out better than we could have hoped. I’ve now started work as a marketing manager for a company.”  

Economics and Finance graduate Thomas Preece has started a role as an ICAEW Chartered Accountant. He said: “I have had some fantastic support from the placements centre who took the time to explain assessment centres, prep me on psychometric testing and generally help with get ready for the interview. I don’t think I would have got the job if it had not been for them.”

DMU enjoys close relationships with companies in Leicestershire, the region and in industry and many of them sponsored the students’ prizes.

Phil Grant, of the Chartered Management Institute (CMI), said: “Awards such as these are important because they show professionalism in your field. It is a recognition of the hard work put in during studies and shows employers that you are not only talented but committed to your subject.”  

The awards are listed in full below:


LEICESTER DE MONTFORT LAW SCHOOL

The Thomson Reuters Law Prize for Best Overall Performance in the First Year – Emily Rochester
Leicestershire Law Society Prize for Best Overall Performance in the Second Year – Kaisha Wilson
Examiners’ Prize for the Best Overall Performance in the Final Year – Katie Shaw
Best Performance by a Final Year Student on a Joint Law Degree Programme in the Law School – William Hartley
Oxford University Press prize for the best performance in Constitutional and Administrative Law – Callum Johnson
LexisNexis Butterworths Prize for Best Performance in Law and Medicine and The Debs Evenden Memorial Prize for the Best Student on the Lawyering Module – Zain Rashid
Award for First Place Work Based Learning Certificate – Abigail Jack (Wilkin Chapman LLP)
LexisNexis Prize for Best Performance in Employment Law LLM – Alexandra Shears
Sky Sports Prize for Best Sports Law and Practice Dissertation – Barry Lysaght
Leicester De Montfort Law Prize for Best LLM Student – Moira Oliver

LEICESTER CASTLE BUSINESS SCHOOL

The Enterprise Team Award for Outstanding First Year Achievement – Tinashe Chavundura
Leicester Mercury Award for Highest Achieving First Year Business Entrepreneurship and Innovation Student – Joanna Dine-Hart
Best Joint Hons Accounting and Finance student – Harvinder Bains
CFA Society UK Prize for Best Final Year Finance student – Bijal Karia
Highest-Achieving Business Entrepreneurship and Innovation – Luke Anderson
Best Brand Portfolio (joint winner) – Jemma Adams and Krishan Jethwa
Best Business and Marketing student – Krishan Jethwa
Baxi Prise for Best Business Management and Human Resource Management student – Janki Patel
Go Inspire Prize for Best Digital Marketing and Social Media student – Manisha Patel
Best Politics student – Henry Taylor
Best Student on BSc Housing Studies – Rosemary Walsh
Natwest/Times Business Management and Economics student – Shivani Thakrar
Best student on MSc International Business Suite – Shanics Olton
Best student on MSc Business Economics Suite – Luther Munakandafa
Chartered Management Institute prize for best student on MBA Global – Mengjun Shui
Cengage Learning prize for best strategy and management dissertation – Anna Tang
Best Business and Globalisation student – Anna Tang
Outstanding Performance in the Workplace – Mitesh Mistry and Esther Sodeke
Best Marketing Dissertation (joint winner) – Marta Michaljow, Mina Halidu and Oliver Dwyer
Natwest/Times best Business and Management student – Hannah Taylor
Sage Prize for Best Business Studies student – Abbey Yates
Bloomberg Prize for best performance on investments and portfolio management module – Thomas Preece
CFA Society UK Prize for outstanding performance in finance – Thomas Preece
ACORN prize for best accounting and business management – Xia Wu
Gemma Newman Award for best final-year performance – Michelle Roberts
SFB Group prize for exceptional performance on advanced financial reporting module – Oliver Lacey
Best BA Hons Politics student – Henry Taylor
Best Economics and Politics student – Stephen Angell
Best Overall student in Department of Politics and Public Policy – Stephen Angell
ACORN prize for best Accounting and Finance student – Yuji Lei
ACORN Prize for best Business and Finance student – Xiaofei Feng
IBM Innovation Prize for Marketing, Planning and Management (joint winners) – Brennan Cross and Oliver Dwyer
Institute of Direct Marketing award for best student on interactive marketing campaign module – Brennan Cross
IBM Innovation Prize for Marketing Planning and Management (joint winner
Sage prize for best International Marketing and Business student – Daniel Kerry
BigDog Prize for Best Advertising and Marketing Communications student – Owen Lloyd
Best Marketing Management student – Matthew McConnochie
Institute of Direct Marketing award for best student on interactive marketing campaign module – Matthew McConnochie  
Cengage Learning prize for best Economics and Finance student – Hayley Smith
Sage prize for best Accounting and Economics student – Karamjeet Panesar
Highest-achieving Economics student – Sheena Patel
Leicester Mercury Award for outstanding enterprise dissertation – Ewan Thay
Best Accounting and Finance student – Ryan Haynes
Best Poster Design for Advanced Corporate Taxation – Nathan Hayles
ACORN prize for best student on Business Management and HRM – Xinyue Hu
Qdos Prize for best HRM student (joint winner) – Ella Wigston and Karolina Kosikowska
Best HRM dissertation – Karolina Kosikowska
Best International Relations student – Uzma Debar
Michael Cunningham Prize for best international relations dissertation (joint winner) – Uzma Debar and Richard Hayes
Best International Relations and Politics student – Delia Matewere
Oxford University Press award for best first year politics student (joint winner) – Michael Becker and Dhara Suryakumar